Allen Roskoff is AKA William’s Political Director and columnist. Every week Allen brings us the best, the worst, and the unbelievable in LGBT news and politics.

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This Year’s “Jerry Falwell Judicial Award” Recipient
I hereby award New York State Supreme Court Justice Lou York the recipient of this year’s “Jerry Falwell Judicial Award.” The right wing likes to complain about “activist judges” who allegedly make up the law instead of following it. I doubt they will attack anti-sex State Supreme Court Justice Lou York because he is openly rejecting the letter of the zoning law on adult businesses in order to close as many of them as he can. The law, passed in the Giuliani years, explicitly says that as long as more than 60 percent of your wares are non-adult videos and magazines, then you are not subject to the zoning restricting adult businesses.

But the anti-sex Bloomberg administration, which has used false arrests and other outrages to close as many remaining adult businesses as it can, got Judge York to agree with them that the “60-40” rule should not be applied to businesses that they don’t like that sell erotica. The New Puritans and anti-sex unit of the Bloomberg crew include Justice Lou York, Corporation Counsel’s Deputy Chief Robin Binder and Senior Counsel Sheryl Neufeld, with the assistance of Assistant Corporation Counsel Rachel Moston. Shame on all of them! I hope they are overturned on appeal as they have been in the past. This is akin to book burning.

We should not be surprised at this latest development. This is the same Bloomberg law department that cited Leviticus to overturn Judge Doris Ling Cohan’s order that he start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Gay couples would be able to marry in New York State if it weren’t for Bloomberg, yet there are still self-hating gay people who supported him for re-election.

Bloomberg stopped gay people from marrying here, and now he would like to stop us from having places where we can meet for sex. His police department spent the last five years making false arrests of middle-aged gay men for prostitution and now they are back in Central Park entrapping gay men in cruising areas. Where is the outrage against this clearly homophobic mayor? Yes, this is the man supported by a number of Republican gay activists registered as Democrats. The hypocrisy of blustering about one’s self being a civil rights leader while having had supported a George W. Bush-supporting Bloomberg over a progressive black Democratic candidate for Mayor is an outrage.